The Penitent Magdalene

El Greco had only recently settled in Toledo when he painted this, an outsider from Crete who had trained in Venice and Rome before staking his career in Spain. The Venetian colour he had absorbed from Titian still warms the canvas here, before his figures stretched into the flame-like forms of his later years. Mary Magdalene sits among rocks with ivy climbing beside her, her hands folded and her eyes turned up to a broken sky. On the ledge rest a skull and a glass jar of ointment, the ointment recalling the woman who anointed Christ, the skull a reminder of death held in front of her as she repents.